Tell Me No Secrets (29 page)

‘Hard work is of the essence. No lateness to lessons. Homework in on time. Have we all got that?' Nobody answers. ‘Good,' he says. ‘Now let's show some effort.'

We file out along the corridors in silence. Walk on the left. No running. Ties straight, blazers buttoned. Fountain pens. Trigonometry tables. Avogadro's number. I'm given a lunchtime detention in French for not learning my vocab and the physics teacher deems my work as ‘worthy only of a cretin'.

The home-time bell can't come soon enough. Orla and I sit together on the bus. It's a twenty-minute ride back to the village and we talk about the up-coming school disco; what we're going to wear, whom we're going to dance with, whether or not we'll be able to smuggle in any vodka. Halfway home, the bus driver has to stop because the boys down the back are smoking. He reads us the riot act, marching up and down the aisle like a military general, threatening all sorts of punishments that we know he doesn't have the power to enforce and then drives on to the village hall where we all spew out on to the pavement. Orla goes one way, me the other. I promise to call her later and then run to catch Euan up. He's walking uphill towards our houses, cracking his fingers, one by one, left hand and then right. It's something he does when he's anxious or in trouble.

‘Our mums went down to Edinburgh today Christmas shopping.' He's walking at a fair pace and I'm puffing to keep up with him. ‘I'm hoping for a new record player. How about you?'

He doesn't answer. His face is solemn, guarded, as if he's thinking something through and I'm not welcome to know what it is. He's still cracking his fingers and the sound sets my teeth on edge. I catch hold of his hands.

‘Macintosh!' a voice roars from behind us.

I look back. It's Shugs McGovern, the boy everyone fears. ‘Don't turn around, Euan,' I say.

Euan pulls his hands away from me and turns around. Stops. Waits. I wait too. Shugs catches us up. Acne spots are dotted across his face, some of them enormous, scarlet, angry, pushing pus out on to his skin. ‘You're claimed, Macintosh.' He moves an index finger across his own throat and then points at Euan. ‘After footie.' And then he goes back towards the village hall where half a dozen boys are waiting for him.

My heart freezes. Euan's lips are tight like he's about to be sick. I take his arm. He shrugs me off. ‘I'll tell my dad and your dad and they'll go to the police,' I say in a rush.

‘No way!' He looks scathing. ‘That will only make it worse.'

‘You can't fight him!' I hiss. ‘He's a bastard. He'll kill you.'

‘Just leave it.' He points a finger at me. ‘Don't dare tell anyone. I knew it was coming and I know what to do.'

‘What?' I push him against a hedge. I'm feeling frantic. My face is hot and I know I'm about to start crying. ‘You can't do anything against him. He doesn't know when to stop. You'll end up in hospital.'

‘I'll get him before he gets me.'

‘But, Euan . . .' I grab the lapels of his blazer and lean into him. He smells of school desks and cigarettes and his own particular smell which has been a source of comfort to me for as long as I can remember. ‘You can't let him hurt you.' My voice is muffled. I wipe tears into his shirt.

‘It's just the way it is. If I don't do it now, I'll have to do it in a month or in a year. I might as well get it over with.' He puts his arm around me and we walk the rest of the way home like this, leaning into each other. When we get to his gate, he lets me go and I wobble back on my heels.

‘I'll come with you.'

‘No. You mustn't.' He rubs my hands. ‘You might get caught up in it. I'll be fine.' He walks up his front path and shouts back, ‘Nice that you care though.' As he goes through his front door he smiles at me.

I'm convinced that's the last time I'll ever see him smile. I'm sure he'll end up brain-damaged, in a coma or a wheelchair or, at the very least, all his teeth will be knocked out. Shugs is known for violence. If he's not torturing small animals then he's picking fights. He's often in trouble with the police, most recently for giving a boy a broken collarbone. And last year he was suspended from school for drug dealing and spent two months in Edinburgh, in what my mother euphemistically calls ‘the home for bad boys'. Since he got back, he's been settling old scores – he thinks Euan told on him – and when Shugs claims you for a fight, refusal isn't an option.

Youth club football starts at seven o'clock. At quarter to seven I'm standing at my bedroom window and I see Euan leaving his house, a lonely figure, kitbag over his shoulder, walking off down the hill by himself. I'm not very good at praying but I spend the rest of the evening on my knees begging God to look after him.

By nine o'clock I'm on tenterhooks and when the doorbell rings I hurtle down the stairs and almost knock my mother over. It's Euan. I join him outside, scan his body and see that he is intact. I even feel along his face and arms and torso just to be sure.

‘I should get in a fight more often.' He is laughing.

I hug him hard and he doesn't even wince. ‘What happened?' I stare at him in wonder. ‘You're not hurt at all!'

‘Like I said, I got him first.'

‘How?'

‘When he was bending down to do up his boots, I brought my knee up into his face. One shot. Got him hard. Felt his nose break.' He swivels on the balls of his feet. ‘It was me or him and it wasn't going to be me. Fancy an ice cream?'

‘You felt his nose break?' I am disgusted. ‘Shit, Euan.'

‘I did what had to be done,' he says. ‘Sometimes that's just the way it is.'

I grab my coat and we walk down to the village, arm in arm. Callum is already there and he's telling everyone about what happened. It sounds like Shugs has been badly hurt but in the dog-eat-dog way that boys have, Euan has earned his respect so there won't be any reprisals.

I feel proud of Euan but at the same time I see there is a side to him that I don't know anything about, a ruthless side that is foreign to me.

When we're walking back home he says, ‘You were really worried about me.'

‘I was scared. You're like a brother to me.'

‘A brother?'

‘Not exactly a brother,' I backtrack. ‘But more than just a friend.'

‘In that case' – he adopts a bashful swagger – ‘you can kiss me if you want.'

It's pitch-dark by now; the sky is cloudy and starless and the moon is nothing more than a sliver. I'm not sure I want to kiss him. I've tired myself out with all the worrying but, worse than that, hearing the story of the fight has unsettled me. It's not the Euan I know. It's not that I think what he did was wrong, more that there had to be another way, one that didn't involve violence. I didn't want him hurt but I didn't want him doling it out either.

Anyway, I kiss him because he's been brave and he's happy and if I don't kiss him I think he'll find some other girl who will. And I don't want that.

13

It's Thursday. One week since I met Orla in Edinburgh. And though it's already three o'clock in the afternoon, I haven't been in to work. I have spent the day out and about. My mobile is off – I'm still avoiding Euan – and I have been putting the time to good use, walking Murphy and thinking about the past and the present, trying to join the dots between what happened then and what is happening now. But I need more information and there's only one place to get that.

I call Murphy and we go back to the car. He settles down to sleep on his blanket and I drive along the coastal road back to the village. The cottage Orla is renting is positioned on the headland looking out towards the North Sea. I stop some distance from the obvious parking spot, noticing as I do that Orla's car isn't there. Good. I pat Murphy goodbye, lock my car and walk the hundred yards or so down the grassy bank to the front door.

From the outside, the house looks as if it has suffered years of neglect. The stonework has taken a bashing from the wind and salty sea spray and is crumbling at the corners and under the windows. Roof tiles have slipped in places and some lie broken on the ground. The garden is overgrown with dock leaves and nettles and coarse, almost knee-high grass. The door-knocker is hanging on by one screw. I support the top of it and bang hard with the bottom. No answer. I try again, just to be sure, and then I put my hands up either side of my face and peer through the dirty window. I can't see anyone inside.

I have never broken into a house. I wouldn't know how to go about it. I imagine that, without smashing a window or taking an axe to the door, it involves twisted pieces of wire in keyholes or credit cards that slide effortlessly into the space between the door and its frame and trigger the lock to jump free. In any event, I don't have to do either because the key is in a similar place to where Orla's mother used to leave it when we were children: underneath a medium-sized stone beside the front step.

I slip it into the keyhole, taking a furtive look behind me as I turn it and go inside. The interior is just as dilapidated and gloomy as the outside suggests. There is a stale, dank smell lingering in the air as if the place hasn't been cleaned or aired in years. Wallpaper is peeling off in the hallway and there are brown stains from water leaks running across the ceiling and down one of the walls. The living room curtains are hanging by only a few hooks; the carpet is worn and covered in animal hairs. The fireplace is obscured with dust and grime and looks as if it hasn't been lit for many years. It's made of cast iron and has two child-unfriendly spikes at either end of the plinth.

There has been no attempt made at home-making. There are no pictures or photographs, no personal items spread over the mantelpiece or dining table, no keys or magazines. Nothing. The sum total of recent habitation amounts to two empty whisky bottles and the remains of a carry out.

I come out of the living room and into the kitchen. The old-style porcelain sink is tea-stained, the cooker thick with grease. I don't hang around – Orla could return at any moment. I have a cursory look in the bathroom and then open the door of the last room: the bedroom. What I see stops me short. I blink several times and tell myself that I must be imagining it. I even close the door and then open it again, expecting to see something different, but I don't. Orla has recreated her teenage room. The duvet is a faded blue and yellow flower print that I remember us choosing from a catalogue, likewise her slippers, and her bedside cabinet is the very same solid oak unit with three drawers and a cupboard and even the bedstead is the one she had as a teenager, with stickers placed randomly across it and her jewellery hanging on a hook at the edge.

I walk into the room feeling like I am stepping through a hole in time. I am barely breathing. The posters are the very same ones she had on her walls back then: Tears for Fears, Guns 'n' Roses and more. We used to write and draw around the edges of them: comments, messages and love hearts. I recognise my own handwriting:
Saw you on Top of the Pops! Great look, Morten!
written in red felt-tip pen down the side of the a-ha poster.

My legs feel hollow and I fall back into a sitting position on the bed. I can't believe she kept all this stuff.

Twenty-four years on and she still has the bed, the cabinet, even the snow globe that she threw to the back of the wardrobe when she was twelve. I pick it up and shake it, watch the fake snow as it falls down around the Eiffel Tower.

The house is completely silent, eerily so. It feels creepy, sitting amid all these memories: creepy and dangerous, like being here will surely invite disaster. The nape of my neck tingles and I keep turning around to make sure that no one is behind me. I stand up with the intention of leaving but the heel of my shoe catches on the handle of a suitcase and pulls it out from under the bed. I bend down to take a look inside. Just a quick look. That's all. I open it.

It doesn't contain clothes or a wash bag. It contains a large and expensive digital camera with a hefty zoom lens. Next to it there are half a dozen A4 manila envelopes stacked one on top of the other. I don't hesitate. I look in the first one. It contains a wad of twenty-pound notes, as thick as a paperback book. I put it back and look in the second envelope. Three brand-new syringes and needles still in their cellophane wrapping and a small packet of brownish powder. I think about what Angeline said about Orla being a drug addict. Heroin? I don't know. I wouldn't know what it looked like. The third envelope contains photographs. I tip them on the floor, spreading them out with my hands. I see myself and Paul, Euan, Ella and Daisy; Euan and me with the dogs, Paul outside the university, Ella and Daisy coming out of school, crossing the road, smiling.

I know that Orla visited the village months ago but to see it like this . . . And Paul and my girls . . . It makes me feel sick to my stomach and I hold my hand over my middle until the nausea recedes. This is much worse than I thought. This isn't just run-of-the-mill spite, a sudden urge to stir up a hornet's nest, this is a sustained obsession, far outwith the realms of normal. She has been secretly, stealthily plotting and gathering information.

There's a chattering noise and I realise it's my own teeth. I am cold inside but now that I've started looking I don't want to stop. I empty another envelope on to the floor. Newspaper clippings. I pick up one. It's from a Canadian newspaper, dated seven years ago. The article is in French. I can't understand every word, but the gist of it seems to be that a man was arrested for the murder of another man. The murdered man is called Patrick Vornier. I scan the text for Orla's name and see it halfway down. She is the dead man's wife. As I thought, I misheard Angeline, thinking she said Fournier when in fact she said Vornier, hence the reason Euan found no record of Orla's crime on the Internet. And then I read further and see that she was arrested for being a
complice de meurtre
– an accomplice to murder.